Hebden Bridge: the community that pooled its resources after a flood

Mopping up: the centre of Hebden Bridge was under water after June’s deluge, but the gallery-owners and traders of Market Street lost no time in clearing up
Photo: GETTY IMAGES

By John-Paul Flintoff

3:55PM GMT 14 Nov 2012

Earlier this year, the River Calder burst its banks — not once, but twice. The first floods came on a Friday in June. The rain didn’t stop all day and the town of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire was battered by a month’s rainfall in 24 hours. As many as 500 homes and businesses were flooded.

“The strength, power and force that the water had on the town caused devastation on a grand scale,” says Alison Bartram, who owns the The Milk Bar, a Fifties-style diner, and the Heart Gallery [a jewellery and craft emporium]. Less than two weeks later, it happened again. Prince Charles was due to arrive in Hebden to show support, but was delayed by new storms and arrived in torrential rain an hour late.

What happened can happen elsewhere. More than half a million homes are at risk of significant flooding without more investment in defences, the Committee on Climate Change recently warned. But this is not a disaster story.

It’s about how the people in Hebden, and nearby Todmorden and Mytholmroyd, were able to pull together and put their towns back on their feet. One of the reasons they were prepared to do that, many argue, is because they had been part of a low-budget campaign, started three years previously, to get the community to support local businesses.

The Totally Locally campaign was designed by a Calderdale marketing man, Chris Sands, with funding from the council. It required participating businesses to stop thinking about themselves, and think instead about the town as a whole: “Because if the town attracts more trade, you get more trade,” Sands explains. “So we have promotional materials that you can put in your window talking about the area’s hidden gems. But you’re not supposed to promote yourself – you promote somebody else. And with a bit of luck somebody else will promote you, too.”

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As a result, the many small businesses in the area, and their customers, came to understand how much they depend on each other. And that sense of interdependence came in handy during the floods.

In helping each other to survive and then recover from the flood, the shopkeepers found strength in numbers — and a message of local pride that they are now taking to a wider audience.

But they will never forget the deluge that brought them together.Alison Bartram, hearing about the heavy rains, left her cosy home up in the hills to go down into town. She met Heidi Rushton from Ruby Shoesday, and Ellen Limebear from The Yorkshire Soap Company. They agreed that something awful was going to happen.

The rain continued for four hours. With no electricity, Hannah Nunn of the lighting shop Radiance watched from her darkened bay window and, like others, tracked the flood’s progress on social media. After warning sirens went off, water started to fill the gutters, she says, then cover the road, then pavements and doorsteps. “It didn’t stop the crazy car drivers,” she recalls. “Every passing vehicle sent a tidal wave into the shop doorways.”

Somebody put up pictures of a car floating in the centre of Market Street. On Twitter, Ed Chadwick from the Snug Gallery [contemporary craft] announced that he was heading there to save his shop, but Beate Kubitz, who read this, was unable to return to her fashion business, Makepiece, because the main road below her house had already flooded.

The extent of the damage was not clear until the following morning. The worst affected shops had been thigh deep in filthy water rising from the drains and spilling out of the rivers and canal.

“It is nearly the most sickening thing I have had to witness first hand,” blogged Bartram soon after. “I never want to see this scale of damage again.” Some shops had lost more than half their stock. But then people started arriving to help. “It was terribly sad — but heart-warming to see a whole town pulling together.”

Kubitz, who sells clothes made with wool from her own sheep, brought her industrial pressure washer and power-washed “like a loon” from dawn till dusk. “Clearing silt and mud off floors was only the first step,” she remembers, but it helped to make the crisis seem manageable. With Mike Dumbreck from The Print Bureau she jetted and swept out Sage and Onion [fashion] and Ruby Shoesday, then the Deli. Next they tackled the pavement outside – to stop people walking mud back into shops as they were being cleaned. “Finally the guys from the Chinese turned up and I moved on into there,” Kubitz says.

“The offers of help from customers, friends, fellow businesses that were not affected, just random people, was truly amazing,” says Bartram. She sent many of them further down Market Street to shops with needs greater than hers. “I saw the very best in people over those few days. I have a special memory of a customer, Giles, who turned up very early, a mop in one hand and coffee in the other.”

It wasn’t entirely lovely, though. She saw passers-by clawing through damaged stock out on the streets, heard condescending comments, and was appalled when a teenaged girl offered to help — for £7 an hour.

Since launching Totally Locally, Sands has been approached by more than 70 other towns and districts across the country for help to launch their versions of his low-cost community-building scheme in their area. And after the floods, he was approached by his own council to help co-ordinate the recovery.

To date, this has included using any available premises to keep affected businesses going, harnessing social media, and creating a range of promotional ideas. The latest is a “pop-up Hebden” to take to Manchester and Leeds railway stations to give a flavour of the town and persuade people to visit. The Hebden WI, the Rotary and a group of artists have raised money for the scheme, and construction starts next week.

“We’re also looking at supporting the nearby towns of Todmorden and Mytholmroyd, which don’t actually have a lot to do with each other, which is ridiculous. We’re creating events that bring the three towns together. For example, we have road, rail and canal going up the Calder Valley, and we’re using barges to create a moving market between the three towns,” Sands says. The businesses that have been worst hit by the floods will be the first to be offered a chance to take a stall.

Of 30 or so businesses on Market Street, only five were unaffected. “We’re a street of independent shops who truly depend on each other to be a critical mass of interesting, diverse, unique businesses,” says Kubitz.

“We’ve a high proportion of designer-makers, and also galleries that support designer-makers — like Snug and the Heart Gallery. Together we’re stronger – and after the flood we really proved how much we mean to each other by helping each other. Everyone’s done so much to get back trading as quickly as possible: lending each other stuff, helping out, using our networks and skills for each others’ benefit. It’s been touching — a reminder that people are basically very kind.”